How to Put Tefilah Back on Schools’ Agenda

Everyone agrees that tefilah is a real challenge in Day Schools, particularly beginning in the upper elementary school grades. Teachers, students and parents attest to the lack of success: most teachers prefer not to be involved, some parents often schedule appointments for their children during the time set aside for prayer, and too many students misbehave or zone out. Instead of confronting the challenge, some high schools have even decided to drop traditional, formal tefilah altogether.

To this end, at the beginning of the summer, the Pardes Center for Jewish Educators brought together 17 successful Day School educators, rabbis and administrators to think more deeply about this critical area. This six-day intensive symposium, entitled Aleinu Le’shabeach, drew a diverse group from Community, Orthodox and Conservative schools spanning grades K-12.

There were many takeaways from this program. However, we want to focus on what we saw as the central and most significant finding: the need to develop and professionalizea field of tefilah education. All the rest is commentary.

What does it mean to have a professional field?

First and foremost, it means that teachers are trained. We train and hire teachers for Hebrew, Bible and Rabbinics – but not for tefilah. Our Aleinu Leshabe’ach participants were far from representative of most who lead tefilah in day schools; each participant brought a strong background in prayer knowledge and skills coupled with personal charisma and creativity. Nevertheless, almost all admitted to having no formal training in this area. A tefilah facilitator needs a wide range of knowledge and skills, and a broad toolkit of experiential education. Morever, to lead, one needs to be connected to tefilah and to be inspired by it.

Tefilah educators need colleagues from diverse backgrounds. The diversity within Aleinu Leshabe’ach allowed our participants to bring a range of perspectives, which stimulated new thinking, challenged old ideas, and encouraged creativity.

Professional fields sponsor conferences and gatherings to bring people together to engender new ideas, build new relationships, and foster advocacy to keep the field fresh and cutting edge.

We need a repository of best practices. What songs, stories, films, themes can relate to and enhance the tefilah experience that we want our students to have? What are ways in which we can teach our students to pray and prepare them for the experience on a daily basis? A website with lists is insufficient. A number of curricula are on the Internet for free, yet it is the training that accompanies those materials that makes the difference.

A professional field has clearly articulated goals. These goals will differ from school to school, but there needs to be a well-thought out process for arriving at those goals – and what it would take to achieve them.

All professional areas within our day schools assess student achievement. That needs to be true for both the cognitive and affective areas of tefilah education. (See our article in the upcoming issue of RAVSAK’s HaYidiyon)

There is a need for a recognized body of literature deemed essential for literacy in the field. Those who oversee tefilah education need to be familiar with how one applies what we know about child development, social-emotional learning, etc. to tefilah education and the decisions we make.

Serious research needs to be undertaken. While synagogue attendance is down, wouldn’t it be interesting to learn why the people who do come to pray, come – beyond a halachic imperative? Are there similar characteristics in their development that led them to become daveners? Is there a formula we need to follow? What happens with our day school graduates vis-a-vis tefilah – in the long run? Opening up these questions is a scary proposition, but it needs to happen.

A professional field has shared terminology. What do we mean by tefilah education, by keva and kavannah, by spirituality, emotional dispositions, meaning-making, etc. We can only successfully share with one another once we are clear about the terminology we use.

All of the above constitutes a tall order, but we need to get started. Some schools devote as much, if not more time to tefilah education than any other area of the curriculum, if one includes services, blessings one recites throughout the day, and tefilla learning that takes place in a classroom. What currently exists is far from a field. We, at Pardes, together with a few theorists and a group of amazing educators, have taken the first steps toward creating this field. We came away inspired by our program to engage this challenge and bring the best of what we know about education to this field.

Comments

I’m saddened that the title of this article was not “How to put God Back on Schools’ Agenda. In fact, there was not a single reference to God in the entire piece. Tefila is communication with God or for those who are uncomfortable with a label, a higher, even supreme source or being. Why would we ever expect children, adults or anyone to find meaning in tefila if they have little or no understanding of God, let alone a personal belief. I applaud the field’s effort to tackle this topic and bring attention to the importance of prayer. I also agree that this can be taught. However, in my opinion, these efforts must begin by teaching about God. Interestingly, for those who equivocate about God – God can also be taught. All the field building, shared terminology, benchmarks, research and assessments will never move the needle until there’s an honest conversation about to whom we are teaching our children to pray. Why pour out one’s heart or talk at all if there’s no listener. What should have been and can be “the central and most significant finding” of this important work: the need to develop and professionalize a field of God education. All the rest is commentary.

Holly,
As someone who has worked in tefilah education your point is well taken. It would be hard to imagine any self respecting tefilah program that did include aspects of the student’s relationship to God. I would say two things however. Tefilah is not only about God and God education is not the exclusive realm of tefilah. Tefilah is also about community building and values clarification, meditation and singing, text study and learning. God education is also about philosophy and theology, morals and ethics. All that is really to say that tefilah education and God education have a lot of overlap but are not synonymous.

AMEN! I wrote about tefillah education in 2008, in the context of synagogue education, and absolutely everything you’ve written here applies to tefillah education in synagogues, too. I would love to be part of an effort to establish more of a ‘field’ of tefillah education – conferences, shared terminology, research, etc. Kol ha’kavod for working on this important topic!!

How sad that you exclude Hazzanim from your endeavor. We are the only people trained in both music and tefillah. Don’t you think we would all benefit from input by the Jewish music professionals and prayer practitioners?

I read this article with great interest but was amazed that it includes no reference to understanding Hebrew, the language of our people for 3,000 years. With rare exception most of our texts from the Tanach to the Mishna and of course the siddur are written in Hebrew and it is the language we have prayed in for most of our history. Yet Hebrew is no longer a priority in day schools and I dare say the majority of day school graduates cannot speak it properly. Without a true understanding of Hebrew it is impossible to both really relate to the siddur and understand the true meanings of the tefillot. “Hear, O Israel the Lord your G-d, the Lord is one” transmits little of the meaning of ??? ?????. We delude ourselves into thinking that Jewish tradition can be truly perpetuated without a knowledge of Hebrew. Our sages had taught that the children of Israel were deemed worthy of being redeemed from their bondage in Egypt for three reasons: they did not give up their Hebrew names, they did not stop using the Hebrew language and they did not dress in Egyptian style.

Important too is to understand that Jewish history is a thread throughout the siddur. As Reuven Hammer wrote in his wonderful book ENTERING JEWISH PRAYER, “Approaching G-d in prayer becomes an experience of reliving history and anchoring oneself solidly in that history. We stand before G-d not as individuals but as part of a historical entity, and if we were not conscious of that, the liturgy alerts us to it.” The siddur is filled with history, most of which sadly is also not taught in day schools.

Consequently, without a proper knowledge of both Hebrew and Jewish history the siddur becomes an esoteric document to most people. This is very sad as there is nothing more glorious than our siddur.

Ironically, I’m noting that in my comments above when I wrote out in Hebrew letters “Sh’ma Yisrael” the letters were not recognized and were changed into question marks. I suppose this is a metaphor for how our youth see the Hebrew language, and consequently the siddur. A series of question marks with no real answers. Sigh.

Unfortunately our website platform does not recognize right to left text. This is a technology legacy issue that cannot be corrected. Our alternative is creating a new database and beginning from ground zero – making old content inaccessible. We do not believe this is a viable option.

We were pleased that our post on the need for a field of tefilah education generated a number of responses. This is clearly a topic that some people feel quite passionate about. Our post was in no way an attempt to define the goals of tefilah education or to limit the involvement of any or all interested parties who would want to engage this challenge. Our goal was to raise the call for the need of professionalizing the field of tefilah education and to offer some suggestions as to how this might be accomplished. We were not trying to define or limit the goals; for some day schools God, Hebrew language, learning the nusach, etc. are central objectives. Goals however, will differ from school to school, and even from student to student. We wanted to emphasize the need for each school to define its goals, set priorities and define its own criteria for success. (Susan and Zvi)

I’ve been working on other projects the last several weeks and haven’t checked back here in a while. Thanks for your response.

I’d like to respectfully suggest that you look into the work of Aryeh Ben David of Ayeka. I hope you’ll find his approach valuable in both substance and breadth.

Wishes for a good and sweet year.

H

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